[SERIOUS] Does anyone think Binance can afford to pay a $4.3B fine, for context the hole in FTXs assets was $6.8B, and the hole in Celsius was $1.2B.

Ever since it was announced it seems like the majority of the attention has been on the fact that CZ was stepping down from Binance and not the fact that Binance has to pay $4.3B in fines.... and that this doesn't even cover the SEC lawsuit against Binance US.

$4.3B is 63% of the size of the hole in FTX balance sheet and 350% the size of the hole in Celsius, with that context it adds a lot of perspective to just how big this number is.

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Back in December Mazars audited Binance and stated they hold 101% of the user assets in custody. They later stated they weren't confident auditing crypto companies and removed the report from their website. source

So lets look at three possible Scenarios.

• Best case Scenario - Binance has $4.3B or can get $4.3B without touching their crypto assets to cover the fees.
• Semi Bad case Scenario - Binance liquidates their over collateralized 1% in crypto assets to pay the $4.3B fee.... that would mean they need to directly hold $430B (30% of all crypto assets)
• Worst cast Scenario - Binance can't afford to pay that fine with their own funds, and digs into other assets in their custody (user funds).

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In Dec. 2022 When CZ was directly asked if his company had enough funds to pay $2.1B if a claw back was attempted his response was "We'll let the lawyers handle it". source and that's less than 50% of the fee size Binance owes to the US.

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I think people have been primarily watching the market to see the consequences of this Binance news and so long as prices continue to go up and the market remains Bullish people are going to underestimate the impact of what this actually means over the short term for Crypto....